[
    {
        "id": 204238,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1961",
        "page_number": 6,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n3\n\nTHE NORTH CHINA BRANCH started in Shanghai in 1857 under the name of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society. Its first President was the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, D.D., the first American missionary in China and the founder and manager of the Chinese Repository. Its first Journal appeared in 1858 in the name of the Literary and Scientific Society, but in that year the Society became affiliated to the Royal Asiatic Society as its North China Branch. Except for a brief period between 1861, when Dr. Bridgman died, and 1864 when the Society was reanimated through the unremitting efforts of Sir Harry Parkes as President, the Society maintained for nearly 85 years—until the outbreak of the second world war in December 1941—almost an unbroken vigour and a high reputation as the principal centre of Oriental culture among the foreign and Chinese communities in Central China. It also kept up a high standard of scholarship and of cultural appeal in its Journal, which appeared unfailingly every year. After the war it continued its work until, after 1948, it was forced through political troubles to cease its activities. The last issues of the Journal had been published with the co-operation of the International Institute of China.\n\nThe Society in Shanghai was from its early days fortunate in the support of a generous public and of the British Government, which in 1868 provided it with a site at a nominal rent for its own building, completed in 1871. Later the property was conveyed to the Society in perpetuity or for so long as it was used for the Society's purpose. Thus, in 1931 the Society was able, with the aid of public subscriptions and generous municipal grants, to build in Museum Road close to the British Consulate a commodious building of its own; it contained a lecture hall named after the late Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a floor to accommodate its Oriental Library of 12,000 volumes and adjacent reading rooms, as well as space for an excellent natural history museum and for the exhibition of Chinese paintings and other works of art.\n\nIn 1941 the Society had nearly 800 members, including most of the leading Oriental scholars, explorers and travellers. Amongst the outstanding personalities who had been associated with the North China Branch a few may be mentioned—Dr. Joseph Edkins, Thomas W. Kingsmill, Dr. Emil Breitschneider, Henri Cordier (at one time the Society's Librarian), P. G. van Mollendorf, Sir Robert Hart, Sir Harry Parkes, Sir Byron Brennan, W. H. Medhurst, Sir Edmund Hornby (the first British Judge in China), Sir Rutherford Alcock, H. A. Giles, G. H. Parker, H. B. Morse, A. P. Parker, Alexander Hosie, Samuel Couling, Sir Sidney Barton and Dr. J. C. Ferguson, an American, former President of Nanking University and a man of profound learning and wisdom who, in the course of half a century, served the Society as President, Secretary and Editor of the Journal.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204374,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 6,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "EDITORIAL\n\nThe first volume of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society published in 1961 contained a short account of the history of the original Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S. which existed from 1847 until 1859. During this early period the original Society published six volumes of its Transactions. It may be of interest to examine the contents of these volumes, and to compare them with what has already been achieved in the two volumes of the present Society's Journal published so far.\n\nThe first volume published by the original branch was entitled Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1847. It was printed at the office of the China Mail at Hong Kong in 1848, and contained 14 pages of preliminary material and 78 pages of text. The last volume to be printed bore the title Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Part VI, 1859, and was printed at the office of the China Mail in the same year. It contained 8 pages of introduction and 164 pages of text. Surveying the articles printed in these six volumes one's main impression is that the subject matter was predominantly connected with China, and that the contributors were mainly missionaries or members of the British Consular service. For instance one of the leading contributors was Dr. John Bowring, who was Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 until 1859. Among others were T. T. Meadows, who was interpreter to the British Consulate at Canton at this time and wrote perceptively about China; the Rev. Carl Gutzlaff, principal Chinese Secretary to the Hong Kong Government; W. H. Medhurst, Jr.; Harry Parkes; Dr. D. J. Macgowan; the Rev. Joseph Edkins; the Rev. Samuel Beal and Alexander Wylie, printer to the London Missionary Society at Shanghai. To some extent this reflects the difficulties facing the Society at this period. It was forced to rely for its lectures and articles on a small number of scholarly people resident in Hong Kong and the five original Treaty Ports. The North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which\n\n1 Bowring was a man of scholarly interests and had received an honorary doctorate from Gröningen University for services to European literature. He was knighted in 1854.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    }
]